Onwards to Laos

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7 hours of travelling, not a great prospect but what a day it’s turned out to be. We travelled by mini-van up to the Thailand/Laos border, stopping along the way to break the journey, first at a cashew nut factory, where they cover cashews in a variety of coatings, sesame seed, spicy soup flavourings, etc, as well as selling strips of coconut and dried fruits.

We then went to a Thai winery. We had been debating how they would grow the vines, only to discover that they didn’t bother. We tasted wines made from lychees and other fruits I’ve never even heard of! The first tasting was the lychee semi-dry white which I thought was pretty awful - when someone said the next wine, a red, tasted better than the white I collapsed in hysterics ... because in my opinion anything would taste better than the white!! Anyway, we treated ourselves to a bottle of the red, although I’m not quite sure why!!

The next stop was at a white temple, which was just awesome - it looked like the snow queen’s palace or something created in Narnia! Unlike others in our group, we luckily missed the signs saying that foreigners weren’t allowed in the temple (due to bad behaviour), so got views of the fabulous wall murals. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed, so imagine if you can a huge gold Buddha with a little grizzled monk sitting crosslegged in front wearing his gold robes, with the walls painted with lotus blossoms. Nothing much out of the ordinary you would think (or you would if you’ve seen as many temples as we have in the last few days), and then as you turn to leave you notice the murals on the wall by the door. Someone had painted the most amazing science fiction type scenes, featuring many of the most loved movies of the genre - Keanu Reeves was there dressed in long black coat and sunspecs a la Matrix, Jabba the Hutt was there, as was Spiderman - Buddha is obviously a very keen cinema goer!

We finally arrived at the border at 4pm, and crossed the Mekong River into Laos in a long thin boat. The next hour was taken up sitting in a bar in Huai Xai overlooking the river, watching the sun preparing to go down and filling in the visa documentation. We then went to our overnight accommodation, a guest house which compromised individual chalets made out of raffia which someone likened to place mats!

Our evening meal with the rest of the group was a Laotian BBQ - large terracotta bowls filled with blazing hot coals were suspended across a hole in the centre of the table. This was covered with a domed shaped metal lid on which you placed thinly sliced meats and prawns, whilst vegetables and noodles slowly cooked in stock that simmered round the rim. Really tasty, although we did have to been careful on how much garlic and chilli to throw in! Jane had bought some Laotian whisky for us to try - at last ... something worse than Lychee Wine!! The evening rounded off nicely with a walk into ‘town’ and a drink at a local bar.

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